rd that he's awful easy on poor men, but takes it out of the rich
ones, so you can bet I went prepared to put up a hard-luck story. I
wore a boiled shirt, goin' down, but you bet I peeled it off before I
went to see him, and I told him a pretty likely story about livin' on
a rented farm, and me with a big family, most of them sickly like
their ma's folks. He seemed awful sorry for me and wrote down my name
and where I lived, and all that, and by George, I began to think he
was goin' to pay my way back or give me the price of a cow or
somethin'. He husked out the lump quick enough, had me come at seven
o'clock--that man gets up as early as a farmer--and when I came to
settle up he says to me: 'Mr. Perkins, if I was you I wouldn't live
on a rented farm any longer. I'd go on one of my own--the north half
of seventeen there--what's the matter with that? My secretary tells
me you own that and there's two hundred acres under cultivation, and
then there's that quarter-section of yours just across the
Assiniboine, where you keep your polled Angus cattle. It really seems
too bad for you to be grubbin along on a rented farm when you have
four hundred and eighty acres of your own--good land, too.' Then he
laughed, and I knew I was up against it, and I tried to laugh, too,
but my laugh wasn't near as hearty as his. Then he says: 'It do beat
all how many poor men with large sickly families, livin' on rented
farms, come here to see me; but'--says; he, gittin' close up to me,
and kinda tappin' me on the shoulder 'did you ever hear about an
angel writin' in a big book--writin' steady day and night? Well, says
he, 'here's one of them books,' and he whipped over the pages and
showed me my name, where I lived and all. 'Ye can't fool the angels,'
says he, 'and now I'll just trouble you for an even hundred,' says
he. 'I have had three workin'-girls in to see me about their eyes
today, and I done them free. I was writin' for some one like you to
come along and settle for them when he was settlin' for his own. I
paid it without a kick, you bet. Don't it beat the cars? Eh? What?"

Mr. Donald laughed heartily and agreed with Mr. Perkins that honesty
was the best policy.

While her father was telling his story Martha sat thinking her own
thoughts. She had listened to his reminiscences so often that they
had long ago ceased to interest her. The schoolmaster studied her
face closely. "No wonder she is quiet," he thought to himself, "she
has neve